


I'm better, I'm better, I'm better

by parrishsrubberplant (genus_species)



Category: Nightrunner Series - Lynn Flewelling
Genre: Domesticity, Fluff, M/M, Morning After, in which everybody laughs at alec and seregil, simultaneous oral sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 13:39:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10992054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genus_species/pseuds/parrishsrubberplant
Summary: "Alec sits next to Seregil. He keeps looking at him and then away, little flashes of bright affection.Seregil presses his knee to Alec’s under the table. Alec blushes.“Did you sleep well?” Micum asks.Alec goes even redder. “It wasn’t sleep we were getting,” he says, and fills up his plate.“I heard,” Micum says dryly."A morning of happiness and healing.





	I'm better, I'm better, I'm better

Micum begins to laugh as soon as he sees Seregil at breakfast. Seregil is practically glowing.

Seregil lifts his hands palm up in a shrug. “I’m too happy to be embarrassed.”

“I can tell.” Micum flicks the livid bruise on Seregil’s neck. “This has been a long time coming,” Micum says.

“It has.” Seregil fills his plate. “I thought, for such a long time, that he wasn’t—” he gives up and just laughs.

“He’s still asleep?”

Seregil actually blushes at that.

Alec comes in a few minutes later. He beams at Seregil. Micum doesn’t bother to hide his laughter.

Alec sits next to Seregil. He keeps looking at him and then away, little flashes of bright affection.

Seregil presses his knee to Alec’s under the table. Alec blushes.

“Did you sleep well?” Micum asks.

Alec goes even redder. “It wasn’t sleep we were getting,” he says, and fills up his plate.

“I heard,” Micum says dryly.

Alec ducks his head. Seregil chuckles warmly. Alec shrugs.

Kari comes in and fills her own plate. “You need to leave,” she says seriously to Seregil. Seregil leans back and puts his arm around the back of Alec’s chair. Kari holds the seriousness for another moment and then the smile breaks through her face. Alec moves closer until his shoulder bumped Seregil’s.

“No, go be gross and in love off in the wildness,” Kari says.

Seregil leaned over and says in Alec’s ear. “You can be as loud as you like.”

“I wasn’t being loud,” Alec says. He says it louder than he means to and both Kari and Micum laugh at him.

Alec goes back to his food, ears pink. “I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

“Woke up would imply you ever let us sleep,” Kari says.

Alec puts his face in his hands. Seregil grins. One of his hands disappears under the table to grab Alec’s.

They mostly manage to keep their hands off one another until breakfast is over and they are in their rooms. Seregil looks at Alec and Alec looks back at him.

“Is it always like this?” Alec asks almost despairingly. He moves closer to Seregil, coming to stand between the other man’s knees.

“Always like what?” Seregil asks. He tips his head back to look at Alec.

Alec reaches out and touches the side of his face. “You were gone a while,” he says. “I didn’t know if we would get you back. And now, I want to touch you all the time. It hurt during breakfast, when I wasn’t touching you.”

“You can touch me now,” Seregil says. “I wanted you to—I think I’ve wanted you since the night you walked into that brothel, since before then. I think I was looking for you all my life.” Seregil doesn’t even know what he’s saying anymore, the words spilling helplessly out.

“I didn’t—I didn’t know anyone like you,” Alec confesses in return, pressing his forehead to Seregil’s. He tangles his fingers in the hair at the back of Seregil’s neck. They kiss. Alec floats happily, drifting on the feeling.

Seregil bites his lip. Alec tightens his grip on Seregil’s hair. “Oh,” Seregil says. He touches the soft skin at the side of Alec’s neck. “I want to make you scream,” he tells Alec.

Alec blushes. He’s so close and warm that Seregil can feel the heat from his face. “Not here,” he says. “Let’s pack. Travel a little. Not go back to Rhimenee, not take any Cat jobs. Just go places.”

Seregil laughs and pulls Alec down onto his lap.

“There you are,” Alec says. He rests his forehead in the hollow of Seregil’s shoulder. “I missed you.”

“I was here.”

Alec says nothing, but his grip tightens. Then he lifts his head and kisses Seregil again. Alec kisses like he fights, skill and precision and easy lightness. He tastes like a drink of cold clear water.

Alec climbs off his lap and moves around the room, folding clothes. He’s getting ready to back. Seregil reclines against the mattress and watches him. “Aren’t you going to help?” Alec asks.

Seregil laughs. “Tali, if I move, I’ll end up kissing you again. Safer I stay here, and keep my hands where you can see them.”

Alec deliberately takes off his shirt. “Packing can wait,” he tells Seregil and lunges for him. Seregil pulls Alec down onto the bed.

Alec lets himself fall, mindful already of the sharp points of his elbows. One of his legs wedges between Seregil’s. Alec arches up to kiss him.

Seregil slips one hand up the back of Alec’s shirt, feels the bunch of muscles under his fingers.

Alec rolls his hips against Seregil’s. 

“You want to go again?” Seregil asks, disbelieving. Not that he himself doesn’t want to, or isn’t ready, but he didn’t expect that Alec—his thoughts are broken into by Alec laughing.

“Yes,” Alec says, “I want—you don’t have to do any work if you don’t want to—I just want—”

“Take this off,” Seregil says, and Alec pulls his shirt over his head. “Take these off too,” and Alec strips out of his trousers. He’s already almost fully hard.

“You too,” he says, and Seregil squirms his clothes off, not willing to leave Alec for a single second.

When they’re naked, Seregil presses against Alec. “Want to try something?”

“What?”

Seregil thinks of a way to explain. It’s easier just to show him. Maybe Alec won’t like it. “You suck my cock while I suck yours,” Seregil says.

“That’s—how—” it takes Alec a moment to figure the logistics out. Then he’s turning his body, kissing his way softly down Seregil’s chest and belly.

Their height difference doesn’t matter here. Alec moans when Seregil puts his mouth on him. He licks Seregil, a long, slow stripe, then sucks the head of Seregil’s cock into his mouth. Seregil swirls his tongue. Alec moans again, but this time Seregil feels the vibrations of it.

It becomes a bright, intense feedback loop, each of their pleased noises spurring the other on. Alec comes first and Seregil follows soon after. Alec swallows and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand.

He moves to pillow his head on Seregil’s shoulder and drapes a lazy arm over Seregil’s belly. “I like that,” Alec says. “I think that might be my new favorite thing.”

“You said that about fellatio too. And anal sex. And—hell, you said that when I touched you.”

Alec closes his eyes. “Fine, then it’s all my favorite,” he says crossly. “All of it, as long as I get to do it with you.”

“Yes,” Seregil says. He means yes to all of it, forever, but Alec is already asleep. Seregil closes his eyes.

He wakes up late in the afternoon. By the slant of the sun it’s nearly dinner time. Alec is still sleeping, breath whistling out softly. Seregil kisses him. Alec stirs only enough to hold him more tightly.

There’s a tap at the door. “Are you decent?” Micum demands.

“No,” Seregil calls back, pulling the blanket up so Alec’s legs and lower body are covered. “But it’s nothing you haven’t seen before, so come in.”

Micum enters. “He’s still asleep?”

Seregil brushes Alec’s hair back away from his face. “We didn’t sleep very much.”

Micum grimaces.

Seregil smiles and begins the slow process of squirming out from under Alec without waking him.

“Leave tomorrow,” Micum says. “We can host you one more night. There’s no place you have to rush to be.”

Seregil dresses, a clean shirt and worn trousers. He combs his tangled hair. Alec sleeps on.

“All right,” Seregil says.

“You finally figured it out,” Micum says proudly.

“Did it really take that long?”

Micum rolls his eyes in exasperated fondness “He looked at you for months all starry-eyed, rode hell for leather over a muddy mountain pass to get back to you—yes, yes, we were all waiting for this.”

Seregil bends and kisses Alec again softly just above his eyebrow, and follows Micum out of the room.

“He worried about you,” Micum says.

Seregil’s face folds in on itself for a moment, a sudden compression of grief and guilt. “I know,” Seregil says. “I can see that he’s lost weight.” He doesn’t mention the frantic way Alec touched him. He knows the lines of Alec’s ribs under his fingers now. They’re both thinner than they were a year ago.

“Come riding,” Micum says.

Seregil takes an inventory of his body, all the various aches and twinges. “Funny,” he says. “No.”

Micum laughs at him.

“Shut up.”

Micum keeps laughing, though he puts a hand to his mouth in a futile attempt to hold in the giggles.

They end up walking together to the top of the hill and looking out over Watermead. 

“What next?” Micum asks.

“The Watcher business is done,” Seregil says. “I suppose—we’re watching for different things now.” He shrugs. “I thought we would just travel for a while. See Alec’s home, maybe even go see mine.”

“Alec’s from the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere,” Micum says.

Seregil shrugs. “I don’t want to do things.” Unless they are Alec, he thinks, and Micum gives him a sardonic look. “I want to not do things.”

“You did save the world. I think you’re entitled.”

Seregil laughs. “I feel new today, and not just because of all the sex.” He pauses to allow Micum time to roll his eyes extravagantly. “I feel like I was under some dark cloud that finally lifted,” Seregil says. “I feel like I’m standing in the sun again.”

“You literally are.” Micum reaches out and hugs him. “Go wash, oh my gods, I don’t think you’ve stank this badly in all the time I’ve known you.”

They turn to go back.

When they reach the courtyard Alec is there, playing with Ilia, his hair damped down to dark barley corn color by a bath. Seregil can’t help smiling when he sees him. 

Micum opens his mouth to say something.

“Not one word,” Seregil says, too happy to mind the teasing.

Ilia runs to her father and Alec hesitates for a moment, then runs to Seregil, who catches him up, laughing.

Ilia looks over at them, suddenly serious. “I’m sorry,” Alec says from under Seregil’s arm. “You can’t have my hand in marriage after all. I’m already spoken for.”

Ilia smiles. Micum laughs.

They keep their hands off one another at dinner, possibly by sheer force of will. It helps that the meat requires both hands to cut and eat.

They walk after dinner, out into the soft twilight and the edge of the fields surrounding Watermead.

“We should leave,” Alec says. “I love Micum and Kari, I do, and I love their family, but if one more person looks at me looking at you and laughs—” he breaks off. “I feel like laughing too and then I remember how it felt when I thought you weren’t coming back at all and I had never told you.”

Seregil pulls Alec to him, resting his cheek against Alec’s hair. “I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t have to apologize for being in pain,” Alec says. “You’re allowed to hurt, and to have grey days, and to not always want me hovering about asking, what next?” He turns his head and presses his lips against Seregil’s cheek.

“I know,” Seregil says. “But I can know that all and still be sorry that you were hurt and afraid.”

Alec pulls back. “Which of part of why I want to leave. I want time with just you, alone.”

“How much of it will we be naked?” Seregil asks plaintively.

“Maybe not quite all,” Alec replies after a moment of serious thought.

“Acceptable,” Seregil says, and they turn back to Watermead hand in hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Missy Elliott's "I'm Better."
> 
> Hit me up on Tumblr! I'm [parrishsrubberplant](http://parrishsrubberplant.tumblr.com/).


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